


You Can Grow: Doug Eiffel and Embracing Aromantic Desires as Character Growth

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Aromantic Doug Eiffel, Aromantic reading, Character Analysis, Discussion of canon child injury, Discussion of canon dysfunctional romantic relationships, Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29450421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Or, An Aromantic Reading of Doug Eiffel.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	You Can Grow: Doug Eiffel and Embracing Aromantic Desires as Character Growth

**Author's Note:**

> Posted for Aro Week, because this is something I've been thinking about a _lot._
> 
> Spoilers throughout the series.

_Wolf 359_ is a sci-fi space opera and my favorite piece of media at the moment. One of the reasons I love it so much, why it was so easy to get so deeply invested in and feel comfortable in, is that there are no romance plotlines. There's an even balance of male and female characters, they have strong, well-developed, unique relationships, and there's not a single romantic one in the mix.

This makes it really easy to read some characters as aromantic, and the protagonist, Doug Eiffel, stands out as a character whose emotional and narrative arc takes on really powerful resonances when read in an aromantic light. _Wolf 359’_ s themes consistently emphasize that your choices make you who you are, that everyone can choose to be better, and that growth and personal fulfillment have to be a conscious choice; and a reading of Eiffel as aromantic suggests an arc wherein choosing to embrace his desires and values as an aromantic person and live his life according to those are part of what led him to be a happier, better, more fulfilled person.

### First, Some Background

From the beginnng, the characters in _Wolf 359_ are set up such that romantic interpretations aren’t obvious or well-supported. The characters develop closer relationships over the course of the show, but there are no romantic arcs between anyone throughout the entire series. Gabriel Urbina, the creator and showrunner, has made it clear on several occasions that he didn’t want to write romantic arcs, and the entire cast and crew has consistently shied away from romantic-tinged questions during Q & As. Possibly this is because the creators are all a group of friends from college and didn’t want to act kissy-noises at each other because that would feel weird (though that’s just speculation).

Specifically, though, because questions about romantic Eiffel/Hera get asked a _lot,_ it stands out to me that Zach Valenti (the voice actor for Eiffel) and Michaela Swee (the voice actor for Hera) have been friends since grade school, and Zach Valenti has made it a point in his Q & A and livestream appearances to steer questions away from the topic of romance between Eiffel and Hera.

This is just some behind-the-scenes setting to suggest that the writing, acting, and direction lead to non-romantic interactions between the characters. Of course authorial intent isn’t everything, but the relationships it _does_ emphasize, and the themes it builds around them, lead to a reading of Eiffel as not only not interested in a romantic relationship with anyone in the cast, but not interested in romantic relationships at all, ever. And that slides really elegantly into the themes in the show.

### Eiffel's History

A _lot_ of this reading draws from the few paragraphs that Eiffel gives us about his past in episode 40, “Limbo,” which, upon looking back, clicks so much if you take an aromantic reading to it.

Crucially, this is the episode where we learn about Eiffel’s ex-girlfriend and daughter.

> EIFFEL
> 
> One day, while Doug's out playing with his radio, he meets this real special girl. Jury's still out on whether she was his dream girl or his nightmare demon monster from the Black Lagoon, but they start going out because... well, he's had worse ideas.

Here, we have a setup/contrast we’ll see recurring: the juxtaposition between something Eiffel _wants_ and _likes_ (playing with his radio; it’s something he’s shown to have both an aptitude for and a genuine interest in), and something he seems ambivalent-to-apathetic about and gives no real justification for doing (going out with Kate Garcia).

“They start going out because… well, he’s had worse ideas.” Doesn’t sound like someone who actively wants a romantic relationship to me.

And the relationship doesn’t go well.

> EIFFEL
> 
> So, for a while things are all happy ever after. Then, for a while, things get real Sid and Nancy.

Sure, _plenty_ of alloromantics have relationships that get toxic and terrible, but this seems like one that Eiffel didn’t particularly want in the first place except as an abstract concept (“jury’s still out on whether she was his dream girl or his nightmare monster from the Black Lagoon”). No _wonder_ he was unhappy in it, if a romantic relationship is the way he felt he had to relate to her and then felt unhappy and resentful when actually _in_ it.

> EIFFEL
> 
> But just when the tower of Babel's about to come crashing down, along comes a magical, bouncing, baby girl. […]
> 
> For a while, it was okay. Doug was seeing little baby Anne pretty much every other day, talking to her every day, teaching her to play the Jaws theme on her little dinky kid xylophone, all the good stuff. Hilariously... our man's pretty great at it.
> 
> MINKOWSKI
> 
> At being a dad?
> 
> EIFFEL
> 
> Oh yeah. Until he slips up. See, fun fact about Officer Eiffel: Dougie Boy doesn't like to have a drink. Dougie Boy doesn't like to have two drinks, or four drinks, or six drinks. Doug likes to have twelve drinks. Fifteen drinks. But when Doug has a kid, he thinks it's time to go the full Robert Downey Jr. He goes to meetings, gets cleaned up. And then one day - one bad day - he has one drink. One. Then it's showtime folks! The Doug Eiffel Limbo: How Low Will He Go? […]
> 
> Kate, our story's angel-slash-demon-slash-ex-girlfriend, freaks out, because... well, because she has a brain. Custody was never gonna go Doug's way because _duh_. And after that... well, Dougie-Doug goes to a bad place. He turns into a bit of a... a good old fashioned monster. And one night, about two months later, he pulls up to Kate's house, jimmys open the back door, gets his daughter in the car, and rides off into the sunset. Happy ever after, right?

And then we get to hear everything else: the drunk driving, the crash, the arrest, the lowest moment in Doug Eiffel’s life.

It’s not a lot of airtime, but it does have a _lot_ of implications.

From this, it’s possible to construct a distinctly aromantic narrative. Doug Eiffel is rootless and unfulfilled and doesn’t have a lot going for him, at this point in his life. He joined the military young, which lasted “until [his] disciplinary record caught up with [him]” (mini-episode 12, “Pagliacci”). He worked private security for a while, and then pizza delivery. This is not the picture of a man who knows what he wants, or how to achieve it even if he did. Some of his choices actively seem to go against his obvious desires—how could someone like him, with his well-established dislike for orders and defiant opposition to authority think that the _military_ would work out for him? (It didn’t.) But as someone kind of rootless, without the ability to articulate what he wants, and with a strong streak of what could be laziness but also reads a lot like ADHD… I can imagine the military would be one of the few places that might accept him, that could offer him certain things (a goal, a chance to work with technical equipment) that he wanted, _and_ be the kind of respectable establishment that would show that he was growing up, being something respectable and productive now. It’s not that it was a life he wanted; but it’s a life that’s normal, respectable, and available to him. And it absolutely did not work out, because Eiffel by his nature is not cut out for military and life and is demonstrably unhappy and resentful in even the slightest facsimile of one.

I see him doing something really similar regarding romantic relationships, and dating Kate Garcia in particular: it’s something close enough to what he wants (he _does_ like her) and so entering a romantic relationship is a respectable, responsible, grown-up thing to do, and he doesn’t even know how to articulate what he does and doesn’t want out of the relationship—until he gets it.

Eiffel is unhappy being a boyfriend, but genuinely loves being a father—again, the juxtaposition between what he _wants_ (his parental relationship with his daughter Anne) and what he doesn’t (his partnered relationship with Kate). “Doug was seeing little baby Anne pretty much every other day, talking to her every day” suggests that he was happiest when he had already separated from Kate but was still in regular contact with Anne. He expresses, throughout, no regret for the loss of the romantic relationship, and was in fact _happier_ when he wasn’t in it; it was the formal loss of custody and being cut off from his daughter that led him to spiral and hit bottom.

It’s also important that throughout he doesn’t really blame Kate for this at all; he doesn’t express particular anger _at_ her, and he respects her, even if resentfully. He acknowledges that her reactions to his alcoholism were justified. (He really, really hates _himself_ for this; the whole story puts the blame squarely on Eiffel for the alcohol-fueled destructive decisions he makes.)

So: even when trying to make a romantic relationship work out, it didn’t, and it made him miserable; it was after separating, and after discovering what he actually wanted (to be a parent, to have this relationship with his daughter) that he became happier and more fulfilled and _wanting_ to do better; and it was after losing custody of his daughter that he really began to get both abjectly miserable and selfishly vindictive.

Overall, this presents a picture of a man who is drifting, trying to fit into "respectable" life trajectories and never fitting or making them work, and then ending up crashing and burning from being such a poor fit in something he never really wanted anyway (military, romantic relationship). And, while very dramatized, this resonates strongly as a “before you knew you were aromantic” feeling, the pressure to try to fit into expectations because, well, that’s what people do, right? That’s how you prove you’re a real and responsible adult, right? Why is trying to do so making me so unhappy, then?

This is all the “before,” the backstory Eiffel tells Minkowski as he anxiously waits to hear if another four-year-old girl with a traumatic brain injury imparted by her parent will be okay. The part that makes his arc feel like _growth_ and _fulfillment_ into an aromantic life is Eiffel’s arc as we see it progress through the “present” of the show.

### Eiffel's Arc

Doug Eiffel’s character development throughout the show is some _really_ impressive character writing, taking him from a snarky rude jerk who is very performative about how much he doesn’t care and isn’t trying, to one of the most emotionally perceptive, morally centered, and empathetic characters on the show. It’s an arc, and a broader theme throughout the podcast, about how our choices make us who we are—and it’s a theme and an arc that takes on an additional resonance when reading Eiffel through an aromantic lens.

We meet Eiffel as a selfish, emotional, irritable slacker. He doesn't care about the people around him, because he's jaded—this is his punishment for his rock-bottom worst decision of his life, a reflection of his failure at being a human being (no stable job, failed relationship—but, again, most prominently, his failure as a father and the harm he caused to his daughter). His tension with the rest of the crew is exacerbated by the way Minkowski is constantly frustrated with his lack of work ethic or any enthusiasm to be here—which, at that point, neither she nor we the viewers realize _is_ a deliberate punishment, is a literal prison. Eiffel has proven to himself that he's a failure, and has given up on himself and is embracing not caring. His whole bit in “Am I Alone Now?” and “Are the Spacesuits Itchy?” plays up that flippantness and callousness. (This is something I actually see as very much rooted in an ADHD reading, too—and ADHD and aromanticism both have a very strong penchant for producing feelings of “why is something that seems so effortless for everyone else so impossible for me?”)

But the same traits that made him the butt of the narrative early in season develop into the things that make him the heart and moral center of the show later on. Eiffel begins to grow as a person and become a better person when he starts caring about the people around him—Hera, then Minkowski, even Hilbert. His impulsive emotional responses—even his cowardice and selfishness—end up making him cautious, perceptive, empathetic, and adamantly pacifistic, trying to solve problems peacefully by making friends and convincing people to get along (ex. “The Sound and the Fury,” “Fire and Brimstone.") He’s the first to try to make friends with Lovelace, and comes close to actually succeeding. He keeps reaching out to Hilbert, trying to get Hilbert to come to the “light side” and choose to be a better person. Eiffel recognizes how his choices hurt the person he loved most (Anne), and begins making conscious choices to care so as to not hurt anyone else.

Over the course of the show, Eiffel not only becomes a better, self-fulfilled, healed person, but a _happier_ person, deeply devoted to the people around him. He becomes his best and happiest self in this space station removed from the social pressures on Earth, embedded in a network of deep and important platonic relationships. These different relationships are in fact the structure through which Eiffel becomes a better person.

Of course, _all_ the relationships depicted on the show are very strong and non-romantic, but other characters _do_ express their romantic interests in other ways—Minkowski has a husband back on Earth who she loves and wants to see again, Fisher has a boyfriend back on Earth he talks about glowingly, and even Jacobi talks regretfully about a separation from Klein that seems probable to read as a breakup. Unlike these, and unlike his wish to see his daughter again, Eiffel never expresses interest in trying to rekindle a romantic relationship with Kate, or to seek a new one. Removed from amatonormative pressures, he found the life he wants and the people important to him, and they’re these people, these non-romantic relationships, right here.

### You Can Grow

Personal growth through your choices, and specifically your choices about who you want to be and what you need to do to make becoming that person happen, are a recurring theme throughout the show. In space, all of the characters are physically separated from their pasts and the things that made them—and now they get to decide who they want to be.

This is exemplified directly in the conclusion of the special episode “Change of Mind.” “You're not just what you were made,” Lovelace says. “You can grow.”

In this instance, _what you were made_ doesn’t refer to any innate qualities. This quote grew out of a conversation between Lovelace and the AI Eris, and _were made_ refers specifically to the idea that they were both literally created by another entity with their own goals—Eris by Goddard Futuristics, Lovelace as an alien duplicate by the Dear Listeners. This kicks off a season-long arc about Lovelace trying to decide who _she_ is going forward, whether she’s still the same Isabel Lovelace. It’s important that it _also_ comes directly after a look into Lovelace’s past—or, as noted, how Lovelace remembers her past. Lovelace is haunted by her mission and what happened to her, and it _has_ turned her into a different person than she was back then. So, social pressures, social forces, and personal history are also all set up as the things that _make_ you, in _Wolf 359—_ and all things that don’t have to define you, if you don’t let them. And, again, space is an excellent place to escape those social forces and explore becoming something new.

This is a fundamental part of both Minkowski’s and Eiffel’s arcs. Both of them have pressures, both socially- and personally-applied, that they’re chafing under and making them unhappy. Minkowski felt an alienation that came from being an immigrant as a child and striving to be a perfect, precise, assimilated American and officer. In her backstory episode (“Once in a Lifetime”), that gets used against her to manipulate her into taking this job. Her self-consciousness about this comes out in her extreme strictness about following the rules because she wants to run a successful mission and prove it was all worth it. By the end of the show, a lot of this by-the-book strictness has fallen away, and Minkowski embraces both more chaotic and lateral-thinking problem-solving, and loyalty to the people around her rather than the abstract idea of rules and hierarchy—and in the process, finally comes into her own as a leader. She acknowledges the idea of choices directly in “Dirty Work”—there may not be any “correct” or even good answers; what matters is that you made the choices.

If space allowed Minkowski the, well, _space_ to not be what she was made, and to grow, the same is true of Eiffel. He’s not defined solely by his past; he’s not defined solely by his failures. They’re part of him, but he doesn’t have to just be what his past made him. He can _choose_ to grow. And he does.

In this sense, we come back to the thematic thread. If Eiffel is aromantic, a significant part of his past was being torn between what he _actually_ wanted, and what seemed like the available option that made sense just because it was there. In space, removed from that, he was no longer in a place where amatonormativity had any hold to present an obvious available option. So he was able to actually look at what he wanted, what mattered, and make those choices… and grow.

On Earth, Doug Eiffel, aromantic, was trying to force himself to fit into expected social structures—a respectable job, and a respectable relationship. He was bad at both, and both were making him miserable, but he had no image of how it could be different, or what he wanted, or what would make him happy. So he kept trying at what he felt he was supposed to do and bitterly embraced his perception of himself as a stupid failure of a person.

But, in space, freed from Earth expectations, he was able to find not only what he was good at doing (radio mediation between humans and aliens, moral mediation between high-strung humans and other humans) but also the types of relationships he wanted (not only a chance to try again as a parent with Hera, but his friendships with Minkowski, Hera, and Lovelace, and even his attempts to reach out to Hilbert). He found a non-traditional job and family structure that work well for him and give him what he wants, discovering a social setup that makes him feel worthwhile, important, and loved.

This reads really strongly to me as an aro narrative: leaving Earth to escape amatonormativity and discovering your preferred found family of strong, diverse platonic relationships (in SPACE). You're not just what you were made (shaped by amatonormativity, miserable). You can grow. You can choose what it means to be _you._

### A Brief Conclusion

Also, Doug Eiffel is living my personal aro dream of living in a big house with all of his best friends. (He in fact one-ups that because the house _is_ his best friend.)

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome any discussion people want to have about this!
> 
> Also, if you're interested in fanfic involving a specifically aromantic Eiffel, well, all of my fic takes this as a given, but [Vibe Checks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23193223) discusses it specifically. Also, not mine, [My Friends Have Always Been the Best of Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194322) by captainoflifeandlemons is absolutely fantastic.


End file.
